Oz Spade
Oz has been a long time enjoyer of Virtual Worlds, starting off in ActiveWorlds in 2000 (becoming a "citizen" in 2001), he became addicted too it but always kept an eye out for other worlds. Oz first found out about SL back when it was in Closed Beta but due to a crappy computer could not join. When he finaly purchased a new computer he had forgotten about Second Life and instead joined There. Oz then became addicted to There and left behind ActiveWorlds. One day while running around There, Oz met his now good friend Pendari (Pendari Lorentz), she mentioned Second Life alot and practicly forced Oz to join (there was no gun involved). Oz Spade was then born in Second Life on 9/23/2003. Initially Oz found SL to be lacking in comparison with There, but as SL progressed forward and There did not, his opinions changed. Oz then became addicted to SL, often participating in the forums and expirimenting with many different projects. He went on to make such things as a recreation of The Black Sun from the book Snow Crash (which has since been deleted), a Public Graffiti project, and the History Project. Oz used to change his avatar often, creating over 20 avatars within his first few weeks of being in SL, but has since maintaned an avatar of an old man in his early 50s wearing a black and white suit with similar styled glasses. He no longer participates in the forums as much as he used to due to it becoming a hive for drama. Oz also goes through periods of interest, from being addicted to something, to not really being interested, etc., currently he is not as addicted to SL as he used to be, but does still maintain some projects or occasionaly start new ones (but rarely finishes them). Oz can be found almost daily on #secondlife, an IRC channel on the EFnet server. Projects 2003 *'The Black Sun' - While maybe not the first, it was said to be the best representation of The Black Sun from Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" by many users. It was located in the great sim of Freelon (121, 92), almost in the middle, next to the Amazon Nation's great land (where Launa Fauna's shop now stands). Fully scripted with both Gorilla and Graveyard Daemons as well as a bartender bot, falling safes and anvils on command, and many other fun things. One of Oz's first builds and large projects he would work day and night on it. Darque Grimm later joined to help out with some scripting and objects. After becoming involved with the Ouranos group, Oz decided The Black Sun could use a better home and asked to move it to the Aleph sim (at the time to be a city) where Lain Kothari joined the team to also help out with various things. Currently however The Black Sun is on hold (and has been deleted) as projects take different directions, Oz hopes to one day resurect The Black Sun in all its glory. There have been other Black Sun projects, but Oz has had little if any involvement with these. Oz's latest creation related to the book Snow Crash has been to actualy create Snow Crash itself, while it does not harm you it is somewhat fun to use, Oz gives out free samples by request. 2004 *'Joined Ouranos' - Sometime in 2004 Oz was asked to join the Ouranos group. He was invited to the group because of his work on The Black Sun. The project being worked on at the time was the underwater compound in Atlas. Oz worked mostly on building small "prop" objects as well as some of the actual structure. Later he would help in building the discontinued project of Aleph. *'Reminder Script' - One of Oz's few commercialy sold products was the "Reminder" which he made at the prodding of Pendari Lorentz. Pendari then made various textured attachments for the script to go in and sold it at different locations. The device allowed you to record a short reminder and set a date for it to inform you about the event or whatever. *'Public Graffiti Project' - Originaly "Oz's Meat" and now the graffiti project as well as "The Black Market". This project allows anyone to leave "graffiti" tags (objects with textures) on the building to a degree. Simular in style to this wiki, anyone is free to contribute. Currently located in Sistiana, click the Graffiti Info tag on the roof of the building for more information. *'History Project' - This is by far not the first History Project in Second Life however it does seem to be the only one currently existing. Oz started the Historical Society with Zero Medici and Merwan Marker. The first goal was to build a History Museum, which was done with land donated by Zero and built by Oz Spade. The SL Historical Museum can be seen at Phobos (220,167) on new land, currently there is most of the information on this wiki as well as several historic objects and images. The History Project then progressed onto a wiki with Eggy Lippmann and Jarod Godel contributing. Now the wiki has moved here with thanks to Adam Zaius. *'Geography Only World-Map' - At the time, Oz was frustrated that there was no "show only geography" option for the world map, only being able to see objects or land for sale and unable to hide things such as people. So Oz set out to take a screenshot of parts of the map, then edit them together and clean them up, removing people and land for sale from them. The map was completed but it is of course out of date today and there is no point in ever doing it again. *'Oz's Website' - Thanks to Baba Yamamoto, Oz got webserver space and set up a virtual world oriented website. *'"There" Style Chatgroup' - A proof-of-concept attempt to see if There-like chatgroups could be done in SL. They can indeed be done and probably even better since some new features have been added. Freely available, open source, not sold for profit, unfinished. 2005 *'"Sane" Man's Walk Across The World' - There used to be an annual "Walk Across The World" that Hamlet Linden would partake, in which he would walk to the center of every sim in SL in one long marathon. But he stopped once the ammount of sims reached an insane ammount (about or over 100). Cubey Terra decided to instead of walking to every sim, walk just along the outside of the continent, a group joined Cubey and had a great hike around the outskirts. Oz, who participated in Cubey's walk and Hamlet's before, is no sane man and decided to walk them all, but with the condition of taking breaks. He announced his intentions then set out on the journey. Four days and many security script encounters later, the journey ended. Oz plans to oneday walk the world again. *'Game Creation System' - Another somewhat proof-of-concept attempt to see if a mini-game type system could be done. Mostly made out of want for a Zelda-like clone in SL, so the system was made with the intention of creating "top down" games (such as Zelda, Pac-Man, etc.). Oz didn't finish this project, but it pretty much works. Freely available for open development. *'Linden Lab Recruitment Center' - Along with Adam Zaius and Splat1 Edison, Oz helped build a proposal which was accepted by Linden Lab. The center can be seen in Waterhead. Oz built most of the structure and did some minor scripting. *'Linden Lab Train Station' - Again teaming with Adam Zaius and with help from Ice Brodie, Oz built most of the structure for a train station submission. However this submission was rejected. The station was steam-punk themed and was deleted, although pictures of it do exist. 2006 *'The Cube Project' - A project being developed by some residents from the IRC channel and others. *'SL Views' - Was a participant of the first Second Life Views group. *'SLChat' - Along with Baba Yamamoto created SLChat, a project for a text-based SL client using libsecondlife. *'SecondCast' - Guest on Secondcast. Real Life 2007 In 2007 Oz Spade in real life began attending college and has not been very active in any in-world activities or projects. Links oz.slinked.net - Oz's website. User:OzSpade - User page for Oz. Category:People